Methodology

We started with a sub-sample of 23.4 million job postings from 5,200+ job boards and 1,800+ cities around the country.

Using some fancy math and thousands of machine-hours, we then identified their primary work locations, primary job roles, estimated salaries and 17 other job search-related characteristics.

For each role and city, we then calculated five metrics:

Monthly Demand (#): How many people are companies hiring every month? This is simply the number of unique jobs posted every month.

Unmet Demand (%): What percentage of jobs did companies have a hard time filling? We won't bore you with the details but, basically, if a company re-posts the same job every week for 6 weeks, you can be pretty sure they couldn't find someone for the first 5 weeks.

Salary ($): What's the estimated salary for these jobs near this city? Using 145,000+ data points from the federal government and our own proprietary sources, along with salary information parsed from jobs themselves, we estimate the median salary for jobs like this within 100 miles of this city.

Delight (#): On a scale of 1 (least) to 10 (most delight), how easy should the job search be for the average job-seeker? This is basically the opposite of Agony.

If you play your cards right — like having an optimized resume, applying to the right jobs — you should be able to beat the average.

Have a comment? Want to collaborate with us? Does the data for Civil Engineers just not make sense to you? Email us at hello@talent.works.